Ganesh Shivaswamy hails from an ancient family of lawyers from Bengaluru. His ancestors had migrated from Arni during a famine which had occurred during the seventh decade of the nineteenth century. Ganesh belongs to a traditional Brahmin family and the family has been living in an ancient house called ' Annapurna ' located on Race Course in the garden city - Bengaluru for the last 80years.
Ganesh Shivaswamy hails from an ancient family of lawyers from Bengaluru. His ancestors had migrated from Arni during a famine which had occurred during the seventh decade of the nineteenth century. Ganesh belongs to a traditional Brahmin family and the family has been living in an ancient house called ' Annapurna ' located on Race Course in the garden city - Bengaluru for the last 80 years.
My great grandfather Ramaswamy Iyer ( 1850 - 1931 ) was an advocate and my grand father Justice A.R.Somnath Iyer was the Chief Justice of Mysore long ago and his brother was Justice Nageshwara Iyer.
My great grand mother Annapurna was a real ' pathivrata dharmapathni '. She was about two decades younger than her husband (Advocate Ramaswamy Iyer) and was keen to pass way as a Sumangali (one who has lived in the company of her husband all her life). Annapurna Amma was a Devi Upasaka and used to regularly perform Srichakra pooja at home.
Ramaswamy Iyer was ill and my great grandmother felt that he may not survive. One day my great grandmother gave away all her jewellery to a number of Sumangali women, wore a red madisaar saree (Brahmin way of wearing a saree) and got into the pooja room. People heard her arguing in the pooja room with someone and therefore one person went inside.
Immediately she stated that it was a conversation between her and ambal, therefore she wanted to be left alone. About 15 minutes later she was found on the Sri Chakram. The chaste lady had passed away as per her wish. A huge crowd gathered and they began to take the Kumkumam found on her forehead as parasadam. Her grand daughter Saraswathi had to keep on adding the kumkumam on Annapurna Amma's forehead continuously.
Police had to resort to lathi charge in order to manage the crowd and meanwhile her husband Ramaswamy Iyer passed away. The wish of Annapurna Amma had been fulfilled by Ambal. Her son and my grandfather Justice A.R.Somnath Iyer bought a house in Race Course in the year 1938 and named it ' Annapurna ' after his beloved mother. We have been living here ever since. It was in this household that we had a number of pictures of God and my aunt took one picture of Saraswathi from the pooja room to her home in Canada.
I was about 13 years of age and I wanted to replace it. Therefore I went to an antique dealer to get one more Saraswathi portrait for our pooja room. Out of mischief, the antique dealer showed me two more Saraswathis but I told him that it wanted a Ravi Varma ( 1848 - 1906 ). He was quick to tell me that the other two were also by him. This incident ticked off my curiosity and I became a collector of oleographs ( a print textured to resemble an oil painting ) ever since, " stated Advocate Ganesh Shivaswamy while on a visit to Coimbatore.
The Advocate has a Coimbatore connect for his parents Shivaswamy and Vimala got married at the President Hall belonging to G.D.Naidu in the year 1971. The grandparents had been keen to serve all the guests on silver plates and G.D.Naidu had made it possible by organizing a large number of similar looking silver plates for the wedding feast ! Ganesh had done his schooling at Bishop Cotton and his law at the University Law College in Bengaluru.
He is happily married to Hemamalini ( grand daughter of educationist M.V.Jayaraman ) and the couple are blessed with a daughter - Shreya Annapurna. She was named so by His Holiness Bharati Thirtha Swamiji, the Sankaracharya of Sringeri. Ganesh Shivaswamy continued his quest and has ended up with over 12000 oleographs. " I was shocked to see people throwing a number of fine oleographs away and began wondering why.
A number of people were burning the pictures and selling the frames away. I was even more fueled and began aggressively collecting them for people were destroying heritage. I have succeeded in collecting 127 out of the 132 oleographs of Raja Ravi Varma brought out by the Ravi Varma Press. Having collected so much, I knew that my work was more or less complete in connection with Raja Ravi Varma.
Therefore I moved into the later artists whose work was utterly disregarded and people used to call them by all kind of names and ' calendar art ' was one of the names ! The artists who carried on with the tradition until the seventh decade of the twentieth century included Mahadev Vishwanath Dhurandhar, Kondiyah Raju ( Kovilpatti ), K.Madhavan, Murugakani and Sapar.
I wish to state one incident here. Once while on a search for the originals by some of these artists, I landed up in a godown with a horde of paintings in a village in Tamilnadu. I had found this place after a lot of search. I reached the place at 6.15 PM and we were able to remove about 400 paintings by the next evening. They are now in my collection. My grandmother wanted to go to a temple in the neighbourhood and I accompanied her.
Much to my shock, the rest of the paintings in the godown had been burnt and the room was being whitewashed ! This is what I encountered as a collector, " exclaimed Ganesh Shivaswamy whose middle name is Vidyathirtha ( he was thus named by the Pontiff of Sringeri - Abhinava Vidyathirtha Swamiji ). The Vijayadasami pooja at Sringeri is being conducted by Ganesh's family for a long time now. The Acharyas of Sringeri had visited his home and Abhinava Vidyathirtha Swamiji had done the Chandramouleeswara pooja at the family residence - Annapurna.
Ganesh Shivaswamy had wanted to raise the level of awareness and therefore had decided to bring it out through web pages and exhibitions. It began happening by the year 2006. In 2010, he had an exhibition at Dakshinchitra in Chennai and it was inaugurated by Actor Sivakumar ( an artist himself). He had been a pupil of the talented artist K.Madhavan.
He had stated that K. Madhavan was a prolific artist and he had painted over 40000 paintings in his life time. The artist had used poster colours and used to take about 40 minutes per picture and therefore could do many pictures in a day. One scholar, Steven Inglis had in fact called K.Madhavan as the Norman Rockwell of South India ( A famous American artist who had painted for the covers of magazines ).
Harishankar, the grandson of K.Madhavan had sent an appreciatory email to Ganesh Shivaswamy for having brought the works to the public domain. Only about 70 of the works of K.Madhavan survive and he used to paint for the wrappers of Ananda Vikatan besides doing a number of movie hoardings. Ganesh Shivaswamy had been one of the Trustees of the Raja Ravi Varma Foundation for few years. It had been created at the instance of Rukmini Varma ( Raja Ravi Varma's grand daughter's grand daughter through matrilineal succession ) of the Travancore Royal Family. The other trustees were Geethanjali Maini and Jay Varma, the son of Rukmini Varma.
" I have now built a three storied library at home. All the materials connected with are stored in this structure and it doubles up as my office cum research centre too. Goddess Sharadhambal has blessed our family and therefore its our turn to do something for our country.
Therefore I have a greater responsibility. Now, I want to write a book on the lithographic legacy of Raja Ravi Varma. I hope to complete it in about four or five years. My journey as a collector has been uplifting and also painful for I had to witness a lot of destruction. The rate of depletion has been astronomical and it was not necessary to destroy so much of art.
I hope to raise the bar over the years. I use this opportunity to request all of you to preserve and promote Indian art for by doing so you will be preserving our ancient culture, " Ganesh Shivaswamy is doing his bit by speaking about Indian art of this joner in a number of places. He had in fact participated in a lecture cum exhibition during one of the Coimbatore Vizha's on the invitation of Swathy Rohit.
The good work and role of 'Saviours of Art' like Ganesh Shivaswamy is much needed in the India of today.